


Gloria, Like Some Other Name

by sailsofmemory



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 05:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3838702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sailsofmemory/pseuds/sailsofmemory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Blackwater burns with the victory of Stannis Baratheon. Sansa Stark rises from the ashes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Phoenix Dying

The Blackwater burns.

Sanasa can feel it through the walls of her chambers. She cannot see, cannot hear, cannot know who currently holds the upper hand in this battle for the heart of Westeros. But she knows that there is fire on the Bay.

Stannis worships the Lord of Light, she thinks as she paces her chambers. Sansa wracks her memory for something learned of this God, some prayer read in a book or a passing comment from Septa Mordane during her younger years. But no, she knows nothing of this God, nothing but His affinity for the flames. Perhaps, she thinks, perhaps this Lord will have pity on all of them and will burn this wretched city to the ground. Perhaps I shall see Winterfell again.

Winterfell.

Sansa allows herself to rest, sitting on the bed and closing weary eyes. Flashes of memory, as far away as the stars that danced overhead and mocked the earthly carnage below, dart through her darkened eyes. She is skipping through the Godswood, she is whispering a prayer into her pillow at midnight, she is plucking a ripened fruit from a bowl and laughing with her brothers over breakfast. More flashes. A long winding road, dreams of traveling South for a tournament, hugging her father, the light breaking across frosty fields with the dawn.

She sleeps. It is moderately peaceful. The Blackwater burns.

* * *

The screaming wakes her. Sansa's eyes dart open. She rushes to the door, stomach clenching in fear. Pressing her ear to the frame, she listens intently, trying to make sense of the madness beyond her walls. So many voices, all expressing the same horrifying sentiment: sheer terror. A single bellowed word makes its way through the chaos, reaching Sansa's ears and rendering meaning before she can process it.

_Wildfire._

Sansa immediately knows she cannot stay locked within the safety of her chambers. There is no safety now. If wildfire has somehow spread to the Red Keep...she shudders, suddenly cold against the heat she knows exists beyond her walls. There is no time. Unthinking, feeling only terror and some pulsing need to survive, Sansa wrenches open her barred door and steps into the flowing chaos in the corridor.

They run like a river rushing from the flames. Men, women, highborn, servants - they all rush, rush, going everywhere, going nowhere, it matters not. Sansa feels the flames through she cannot see them. Heat, heat rising like a sun drawing death in its chariot, ebbs and flows through the madness.

Madness.

The Mad King used to store wildfire beneath the Red Keep, Sansa remembers with a start.

Cersei's words return to her, hissing through the unseen blaze.

_He will not have us._

Sansa's heart stops. She knows, in this moment, that she will never see Winterfell again, will never again rest eyes upon the ancestral home of her fathers. Her feet numbly run across halls as all around her fires rage and pillars of kingship collapse. They are cut from stone and skeletons.

Where are the Gods?

Dead. They dance tonight. They are weary of our mortal games, Sansa thinks. The heat grows. Perhaps the Lord of Light has consumed them all and the Stranger now frolics in the flames that drink deeply of our lives.

Dying is quicker than she had expected.

The ground explodes in front of her footsteps. Stone is strangely, comfortingly cold beneath her bare back. There is a flash of green, a sear of white pain, and a single word that passes through her mind.

_Robb._

Blackness wins. The Red Keep earns it name this night. Sansa burns.

* * *

Sansa thinks she is dead. The night envelopes her. Around, there are muffled cries, the shuffling of feet, deep voices that call for something unheard and certainly unseen. She is deeply troubled. No visions of starlight or silks await her in this afterlife; indeed, it is a reward that feels like the pits of death.

"Lady Sansa Stark."

Is it the Lord of Light? Does he come to break through the darkness of the night of the afterlife? Perhaps it is the voice of the Stranger, she thinks, carrying her from the Seven Hells into the Seven Heavens. Somewhere the Children dance in the pits of her mind, but she cannot think, cannot focus, cannot feel. She floats, she does not respond.

"Lady Sansa," the voice echoes again, rougher, tinged with worry.

It is not the voice of a God, Sansa thinks. Gods do not fear.

She tries to open her eyes. She cannot. They are bound shut. Panic, panic, swirling with the depth of ten thousand burning stars. She chokes on words that die in a scorched throat. Hands too cold to understand and fingers too numb to comprehend fumble at a strip of leather wrapped around her forehead.

Rough fingers with gentle touch pull her shaking hands away from the binding. Things are loud, growing louder, clanging with harshness against her ears. She tries to speak but the words are puffs of smoke and the crying and the screaming and the shuffling and the dying are crashing against her head.

Something cool and slightly bitter is poured down her throat. Milk of the poppy, Sansa realizes as her lips close and her hands fall to her sides. She slips into troubled unconsciousness.

* * *

"Lady Sansa."

The voice is rougher this time, and it jolts Sansa from deep sleep with a sudden wrench. For a split second, she is in Winterfell and has woken from a summer dream.

_Robb._

But it is not her brother, and she still cannot open her eyes, and the voice of the man crashes against her sensitive ears with waves of breaking pain. She turns her head toward the sound of the voice and manages to force a question, through the tightness of her constricted throat.

"What happened?"

There is laughter. It is not malicious. It holds contempt, but not for her, Sansa realizes. It hurts her head.

"Quite a loaded question, My Lady," the man responds. "Know that you are safe now, that King Stannis now sits upon the Iron Throne and that your captors have been justly rewarded."

Perhaps he notices her flinching. His voice softens, but still Sansa feels the shouting and the screaming.

"My Lady..." he begins and trails off, searching for words, Sansa realizes, searching for an explanation that would never come.

She is blind. Strangely, the first thoughts that drift through her mind are not anger, nor sadness, nor worry. She thinks first of Bran, her brother now dead, her brother the climber, her brother the cripple. I am like Bran now, she thinks, the thought drifting through her head like a leaf upon the stream. It is gone before she can ponder it.

Ser Davos Seaworth escorts her from the unfamiliar chambers. He informs her that she has slept for three days. She cannot find the proper response to the Lord Hand's words, so she remains silent. It, too, is deafening as the words that drop, soaked in saltwater and brine, from his lips.

She stumbles over stairs and crooked stones. Davos brings hands to her arms and guides her slowly, patiently. Somewhere, she feels a lack of fingers ghosting on her elbow, but she makes no mention of the lack of perception. She is crippled, too. Still, she knows the steps through the Red Keep.

Davos pauses before answering her questions. He apparently decides that honesty would not hurt her further than her current condition, for which Sansa is silently grateful. The Throne Room is a holdfast for the dead, he says, for the burned and the pierced and the broken...and the dying, he adds, more quietly than the rest.

Sansa cannot manage the stairs at the Tower of the Hand.

The Lord Hand gently suggests an alternative. Sansa nods her approval and Davos lifts her into his arms, taking special care to avoid her injuries, numerous as they mar her skin. It is a silent climb.

She is trembling slightly by the time he places her softly upon the ground once more. The exertion, little as it was, has made her exhausted, and she is cold from the burns and terrified of the King. She raises a shaking hand to smooth the fabric of her dress, fresh but rough fabric placed upon her body by some unseen benefactor as she slept. Davos notes her fear.

"His Grace will not harm you, My Lady," he says, words erupting in her ears.

Sansa nods, unconvinced. Everyone harms her.

* * *

If tempered steel could speak, it would have the voice of Stannis Baratheon, Sansa believes. His words are a swirling storm over grey waters, rough, slightly painful, with a deeply hidden passion of conviction.

"Lady Sansa," he says, and Sansa can hear heavy footsteps upon the floor.

She flinches, partly from pain and partly from fear. The footsteps fall silent. The next words are Stannis Baratheon's attempt at softness. They are as soft as a dying hurricane.

"You are safe now and have nothing to fear, My Lady."

Sansa comes to her senses. The King is speaking to her. The King is dead. Which king lives, which king dies? Robb is in the North. He too is King.

_Robb._

She curtsies. It is clumsy. She stumbles. Two hands catch her roughly, two unbroken and unmarred hands.

"Apologies, Your Grace," she says, casting her face away from the eyes of Stannis Baratheon. She can feel them gazing at her with an intensity she cannot see.

Sansa remembers her father speaking of the Baratheon brother, always with respect in his words. Stannis is an honorable man, her father would say, Stannis is nothing like his brothers. From his words, Sansa often wondered at Eddard Stark's relationship with the late King Robert. Stannis, the honorable, the just, the terrible, the man made of iron and steel and unreadable as the sea under the blackness of night.

Hard fingers were gentle underneath her jaw. If she had eyes to see, Sansa supposed she would be gazing upon the battle hardened face of a King. But she could not see.

The next words to rush upon her pained ears were not unexpected.

"I need to secure the North, Sansa Stark," the King stated. "Your brother remains in open rebellion against the crown. If he accepts my terms of surrender, I will permit him to return to Winterfell to remain Warden of the North."

The man is blunt, Sansa thinks. There is a pause. He expects a response.

"I...my brother is a traitor, Your Grace," she repeats, falling back on dead, meaningless words.

"You are no longer a captive and I am not a Lannister," Stannis snaps, his voice again harsh and grating. "I do not expect you to answer for your brother's actions. I am merely explaining my situation as it pertains to yours."

Somewhere, Sansa understands where their conversation wanders. The far-off realization, something she can observe but not touch, see but not understand, floats away into the darkness. She carries herself after it. Selyse Baratheon had died aboard the ship bearing herself, the Red Priestess, and her daughter. Selyse Baratheon had died. Died. Died without providing a male heir.

_I need to secure the North, Sansa Stark._

Sansa does not feel herself hit the stone floor of the Tower of the Hand.

The Blackwater had burned.

 


	2. Argus Sans All

Robb's words are curt.

_To Stannis Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Andals, The Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm:_

_I accept your terms of surrender and shall arrive within a fortnight for your ceremonies._

_Robb Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North_

The words are light on Shireen's tongue as she rereads the letters for Sansa. They are heavy in Sansa's heart. Somewhere, she knows that Robb would accept terms of peace with Stannis; she knows her brother's qualm is not with the Baratheon. It is not an unexpected outcome. But Sansa also holds onto a small glimmer of hope, hope that her brother will quite gracefully inform the new King of Westeros that the North was, and ever will be, a free country. Hope that he will march upon the Capitol with all the Northern retainers and complete the Lannister's tasks of burning this city to the ground.

But Sansa has learned that hope is akin to foolishness.

She no longer keeps hope for herself, but gives it to the realm. She will be Queen, she will be Queen.

Shireen is a light, a pointed star that outshines the seven points of the customary celestial dancers. The girl is kind, educated, a true Lady born and raised in the most unladylike circumstances. Sansa no longer pities her. The girl is strong, too.

"Are you excited to see your brother again?"

The girl's words dart into Sansa's mind. She is broken from her reverie of lost hope.

"Oh...I'm sorry, Lady Sansa, I only meant..."

Shireen's words trail off, and Sansa realizes she apologies for the use of a single word that assumes her functioning eyesight has returned. Sansa is not offended. She has been stripped and beaten and bruised, battered and publicly humiliated. No words that drop from this sweet child's lips could possibly harm her now.

Sansa smiles.

"I am, Shireen. There is no need for an apology, and no further use for your formalities. It is Sansa."

"Father calls you Lady Sansa."

The girl's words are true. Sansa cannot deny them. The King, in their exceedingly limited interactions, continued to be the soul of utmost chivalry. Sansa would be impressed if not for the fear that Stannis Baratheon ignites in her heart. His words of smoke and seawater rush over her mind, harsh and chilling, yet they cannot sooth her burns and wounds. He is just, Davos says, just and fair and the true king. Davos lacks fingers on one hand. Sansa knows this. She wonders if her intended will remove her fingers as well.

She shudders slightly. Shireen sees; the child sees everything, Sansa thinks.

_Courtesy is a Lady's armor._

"Come, Shireen," she says, smiling again, covering everything with her breastplate and her shield. "It is nearly time for dinner with your Father. Would you braid my hair?"

The girl nods, presumably, as there is no spoken response, only hands at the nape of her neck, fingers tracing scars that lick along her skin like flames. They may never heal.

But neither will she.

* * *

Blindness is a curious thing. It does not render the life unlivable, nor the circumstances unbearable. There is the diffcilut transition, yes. There is the lack of books and the reliance on others and the inability to do the great and curious explorations once possible with eyesight. It turns everything one understands about life on its head. But it does not end the life.

There are stares. They are felt, if not perceived. There are pitiful glances and snickers and shocked sighs and sympathetic gazes. They are all understood through the blackness. There are those who help too much, who presume infirmity, and there are those who, feeling that lack of eyesight is transferable, touch not at all.

Normalcy is lost. The blindness renders humanity and relationship obsolete.

But Stannis Baratheon does not stare. Stannis Baratheon has expectations.

Stannis Baratheon has a Kingdom to run, and loss of eyesight or fingers will not excuse one from duty.

* * *

Davos gifts her with a thin, carved pole. She runs her fingers over its surface. It is smooth and polished, with intricate designs carved into the woodwork, symbols and patterns and pictures that her fingers cannot separate. It ticks loudly upon the stone floors of the Red Keep.

"A gift from Salladhor Saan," he says, voice gruff but kind as ever.

Sansa is becoming accustomed to the loudness of sound.

She has heard of Salladhor Saan, the notorious pirate and sellsail, friend to Davos and ally of Stannis. The Lord Hand, in his available hours, gifts Sansa with tales of his travels and explorations, leaving out the bits of illegality, at the request of the King. Sansa has heard the name of Salladhor dropped on several occasions.

The pirate captain apparently had caught wind of Sansa's condition. Having seen many a blinded sailor, Saan commissioned the pole from an artisan in in Lys. Davos describes the benefits of the pole, their frequency in the Free Cities in Essos and upon the pirate ships of the Narrow Sea. Sansa listens, enthralled by the words, spirited away to a land where moonlight shatters mirrors and where gems are cut and where the hope of all the world flows with a trickle of honey, a story beyond her touch.

Stannis does not approve of the carved pole. It reminds him of the lawless pirates upon the seas, he says, without justice and without law. He asks her to place it aside.

Sansa begs him to reconsider. It gives her freedom, hope for solitude, an unaided walk in the Godswood, a life with some measure of independence away from the supportive arms of the Kingsguard.

His words are louder, sharper, angry. He asks if she presumes to travel freely without the Kingsguard ever again. She responds with words of spite and bitterness, throwing his farcical marriage proposal back into his face. The air moves. Sansa flinches, anticipating the pain to come.

Stannis sees her movement, her fear, her remembrance of days past. Stannis does not strike. He does not speak.

She feels tears leaking at the corners of her dead eyes. Stannis does not speak. She tosses the pole aside and rushes from the room, grasping along the walls and stumbling along the stones until she reaches her chambers. Sleep comes mercifully quickly.

The pole is resting against her hand when she wakes.

* * *

King Stannis does not care for wedding preparations.

He is forced to listen, of course. They both sit at rapt attention at the Small Council meeting as Petyr Baelish drones on about monetary issues and as the new Lord Commander of the City Watch discusses matters of security. Sansa feels him shift uncomfortably at her side as Littlefinger speaks. She knows Stannis despises the man, but she also knows that the Crown is deeply indebted to the Iron Bank of Braavos, as is Stannis himself, and the new King cannot afford to lose so experienced a Master of Coin.

Baelish keeps his head for now.

Sansa is of the North. She keeps the Old Gods, and she informs the Council that her brother and his retainers also expect a ceremony of dedication to the Old Gods, the Gods of the frozen and hard North. But she is also of Riverrun, and often found herself offering up songs to the Mother or finding solace in chants to the Stranger. She suggests two ceremonies. She waits for Stannis' approval.

"Agreed."

Stannis believes that each word is another coin owed the Iron Bank, she feels. They continue talk of ceremonies.

The priestess Melissandre is dead. Her body washed ashore with the rest. Sansa heard that her hair was burned off. Lord Varys suggests Thoros of Myr as a viable candidate for completing the necessary marriage rites acceptable to the Lord of Light and his followers. Sansa feels the agitation pouring from Stannis.

"I will not participate in that farce of a ceremony," he says gruffly, cutting off the sweetened words of Varys. "The Red Woman is dead, and with her goes her God."

Sansa finds Stannis' sleeve and places a hand upon his. It is rough, cold. He jerks away as she grips firmly but gently.

"Your Grace," she says softly. "Many of your closest advisors still keep the Faith. You do them injustice by leading them through battle but not to sustained victory." She turns her head toward Varys. "We will have the ceremony. Send word to Thoros of Myr."

There is silence. Sansa realizes what she has done. Her stomach clenches with anticipation.

_His Grace is just._

Fingers, so cold and rough, finally break free of her grasp. Sansa's stomach plunges for an instant, but its rapid descent is halted by fingers again grasping her hand, squeezing gently. The touch is unsure but true, strange but comforting. It is burning hands upon a warm cup, shocking but welcome. She assumes that Stannis has nodded his approval at her words, as the subject of conversation immediately turns away from ceremonies and toward housing and provisions.

The fingers do not leave her hand.

 


	3. Never As Oenone

She sits at Stannis' side at the great length of the throne room. Two fortnights have passed since the Battle of Blackwater Bay and Stannis's victory. The throne room has since been rid of its dead, but they tell her that scars remain scorched into pillars and walls, painted onto steps and stone. There is no escaping the past.

Sansa cannot see the scars, but she can sense them. She can smell the stains of blood and smudges of ash. She can feel the tension radiating from the King's skin at her side. No one, no one wants to be here.

A trumpet sounds. Too loud, Sansa thinks, too loud. She hears the doors flung open at the far end of the room, hears the proclamation of Stannis Baratheon's name and station, hears the heavy footsteps of a former king and his retainers.

_Robb._

The footfalls still just before the stairs to the throne. She barely conceals her emotions, guarding tears that beg for release and smiles that threaten to break across her face. Her brother, her mother, her family. But they have not come to rescue her, she thinks anew, remembers that Robb now bends the knee with the Tullys and the Tyrells and the Lannisters and the rest of the revolutionary lords. Robb has come for a marriage celebration, a strangely joyful and solemn binding.

She will be Queen, she will be Queen.

"Rise, Lord Stark."

The words that drop from the King's lips are iron forged in respect. Stannis does not forget her father's sacrifice and loyalty, Sansa knows. Hope spring and falls within her chest.

_Family, duty, honor._

She is a Stark, but Tully blood rushes through her veins. She does what she does now for the family, for her living relatives, for their lives and safety. She does this for duty, so beloved by Stannis Baratheon and so necessary for a bleeding realm. She does it for honor, for the sacrifice.

Words exchanged between Robb and Stannis dance dutifully through the air. Sansa follows them loosely, feeling the air for her mother's eyes. She wonders how her mother felt upon her betrothal, upon her wedding eve.

At least she had seen her husband's face.

* * *

Stannis does not believe in public displays of affection. Stannis does not believe in displaying affection, period, Sansa soon comes to recognize. However, he does grant her private time in her chambers with Robb and her mother, for which she is immeasurably grateful.

Robb's face is weary, older. She feels the lines that might have graced Eddard Stark's face now trailing along his forehead, his jawline, around his tightly pursed lips. He breathes a sigh when Sansa's fingertips brush lightly over his closed eyelids. They relax into her hands. Robb is older.

"Sister," he breathes, voice full of unspoken apologies and unbridled wonder.

Sansa understands. There is nothing to be said, nothing to be spoken for the lost time and the stolen lives, but only awe to be expressed at their reunion.

Her mother's face has aged as well, and her lines are fully of worry and woe, filled with the sad songs of murdered husbands and lost daughters and burned homelands. So many holes in her chest. You Lannisters, Sansa muses, you've gone and left a pierced hole where a full heart once beat. Tears fall from Catelyn Stark's eyes. Her youngest are lost, her daughter is blind.

But her daughter will be Queen, Sansa thinks.

Rejoice, Mother, rejoice.

* * *

Sansa wears a single dress to all three wedding ceremonies. Lady Olenna Tyrell had, unsurprisingly, expressed displeasure at this development, claiming that a bleeding realm could only be healed through pomp and circumstance, and that no proper Queen would wear the same gown to three separate ceremonies. She had lost, naturally. Both Stannis and Sansa backed a simple wedding, an unadorned and plain feast. After Stannis had made the decision, there were no further arguments from their attendees from Highgarden.

Her mother describes the dress on the cool morning that breaks through with the dawn.

"Grey, with slashes of gold cut through the sides..."

The voice trails off. Sansa feels for her mother's hands, grasping them as tears prick at the corners of her eyes that can no longer look upon her loved ones' faces, can no longer see the beauty of a wedding dress or meditate upon the sunrise of her wedding day. Ah, but they are Tully women of the North, and they are strong, strong as the winter that rides upon the back of the direwolf and marches down dutifully from the great frozen lands beyond their horizons.

_Winter is coming._

* * *

They kneel before the heart tree. Sansa believes that the sun pierces through the reddening leaves.

Words tumble from her lips. They are strange upon her tongue, even rougher dropping from the lips of Stannis Baratheon. Sansa knows, feels his disdain for the ceremonies and for the Gods. She knows this, she does. But yet she remembers the days when bruises dotted her skin and when her father's head guarded the battlements of the Red Keep and when she caught word of the burning of Winterfell. She recalls the pain, the fear, but also the solace found in this Godswood.

She hearkens back to the sacred trees of Winterfell, of the far North country beneath a swift sun rising on frosty fields.

For a moment, she is home.

Stannis Baratheon wraps gloved fingers around her slightly trembling hand. She returns to Kings Landing. It is cold here, here in the early hours of the morning where the first ceremony has been completed. Gently, gently, the man pulls her from her kneeling position and presses the pole into her hands. Sansa feels a warm cloak placed about her shoulders. It smells of smoke and tarragon.

She walks slowly through the line of attendees. Stannis stays by her side as they migrate, the long train of them, to the opposite end of the Godswood. The walk is long and the roots are numerous, and occasionally Stannis will place his hands along her waist, lifting her over their knotty surface until it is safe for her to walk again. It is a strange dance of duty.

A gloved hand moves further up her wrist, subtly signaling to Sansa that their destination draws near. She slows her paces to match Stannis' steps until, at last, they come to rest at the edge of the Godswood. Sansa hears the crackling of fire and feels the heat from a nearby flame. She tenses, ready to run as her scars rush cold against her skin.

"It cannot hurt you again."

Stannis' words roll like seawater over her ears, calming her with their cool spray and fierce protection.

The ceremony is brief. Slightly slurred words flow from Thoros of Myr's mouth. Sansa suspects he is drunk. The thought gives her cause for slight laughter, which might have been expressed if not for the imposing presence at her side. Stannis will not be happy, she muses, but she is amused for the moment. She feels a flame move to her left, presumably encircling the King's face. She tenses again, fear coursing through her veins as she anticipates the mirrored action across her own skin. Her grip grows tighter around gloved fingers.

"No," comes a command from Stannis that even the fire priest with the flaming sword cannot ignore.

The flame does not pass by Sansa's face.

* * *

"I am his, and he is mine."

Stannis Baratheon has already cloaked her in gold and black, has brought her under his protection. Their hands quiver slightly beneath the ribbon entwining their fingers. It is not from the cold.

Sansa speaks the words with a sense of duty. Stannis Baratheon is a good man, an honest and just man. He will not beat her, will not order her stripped or humiliated or leave her for dead in the back allies of Flea Bottom. He is a good man. But Sansa still fears him. Her hand trembles. Mercifully, her voice is true. She muses briefly upon the night to come, upon things that previously might have delighted her, upon dances and jesters and entertainment, upon feasting and laughter and joy. These things no longer hold meaning for Sansa. They have darkened with the passing of the days.

She wonders at the thought of the marriage bed. Her stomach clenches. She does not believe that Stannis Baratheon will harm her, but her hope has been diminished by men, men cruel of heart and rough of hand.

_Family, duty, honor. Winter is coming._

The King's lips are tight and cold and quick of action.

Applause erupts throughout the Sept of Baelor. The Seven Kingdoms again have a solid King and Queen. The long war is ended. Stannis Baratheon sits on the Iron Throne, with Sansa Stark at his side.

She is Queen, she is Queen.

The applause hurts her ears.

 


	4. Trimalcho

The irony of all this celebration does not escape Sansa.

Since she was young enough to understand, she has always dreamed of a big wedding, of dances and countless courses and beautiful dresses and colors and fabrics, and of seeing her parents smile and her brothers laugh. She presumes that some of it happens now, that some guests dance and enjoy their simple food offerings, and that some women have scraped together enough to wear modest dresses, and that perhaps a smile will reach her mother's sad eyes and a laugh grace her brother's tired face.

But she will not see it.

_Oh, but she is Queen, she is Queen._

They have a small number of simple courses as the few singers in the Capitol grace their ears with songs of Stannis' victory at the Blackwater. Sansa feels her husband tense beside her as a certain man plucks a harp and chants a solemn reliquary for those who burned. She reaches out for his sleeve and whispers in his ear. She feels the air move with his nod, and his weathered hands move toward her plate, deftly and inconspiculously arranging the food, making it easier for her to eat.

Not that she is actually hungry. But Sansa has learned that her husband is more at ease when doing things, when completing tasks – and sitting upon the dais for hours has done nothing for his nerves. She lets him help her.

"Your Grace."

The rough words tumble to her ears. Davos begs her pardon – granted, of course – and speaks more softly to Stannis. Sansa catches words, "emissary…Iron Bank," but part of her supposes that Davos, too, recognizes Stannis' discomfort. This part of her is grateful to the man.

She stares into something as the singers carry on.

* * *

 

Time passes. The air grows warmer as Sansa feels the footsteps and movements as guests begin to dance, spurred on by large amounts of wine, the only freeflowing substance at their celebration. Stannis had balked, but the Small Council had insisted, and Sansa's voice brought the decision to victory.

"We should dance."

The words slip from her tongue unburdened, and Sansa wonders if she, too, has partaken too freely of the Arbor Gold. Stannis jerks at her words, perhaps equally as shocked at her candor.

"Wartime is no occasion for dancing, My Lady," he states brusquely.

Sansa weighs his words carefully.

"The war is nearly ended, Your Grace. The North is wedded to the South and the false kings are dead."

There is silence – relative silence, of course, punctuated by laughter and music and shouts from the floor below the raised dais. Sansa feels Stannis' heavy gaze upon her. She can always feel his eyes.

"Very well."

She leaves her pole behind and entrusts herself to Stannis' guidance, to his strong arm clad in smooth leather. She can feel crowds parting near their footsteps as softly they walk to the floor.

Stannis is the hardness of a Northern winter, a grey sky that stretched beyond the frosty fields that crunch underfoot of weathered boot. While not overtly dangerous, he veils the threat of oncoming storm with practiced precision. Sansa knows that her husband, her King, is no man to be trifled with, no spring day or summer evening. But as he intertwines their fingers and lays a hand solidly upon her waist, Sansa also feels the strange protection that comes with a Northern winter. As he leads their steps with unparalleled precision, Sansa feels both relief and apprehension. Stannis is good, just, firm, everything that Joffrey was not. But she also fears that the rigidity of her new husband's views will prove a barrier to her freedom, will craft a new cage for her songs.

She dances a fine line with her new husband.

* * *

 

Robb stands at the entrance to the long corridor that leads from the feast room to Sansa's chambers. Grey Wind bars his teeth at Robb's side; even if the drunken guests wish to test Stannis' patience and attempt a bedding ceremony, they would not dare try her older brother and his great direwolf. Sansa sends up a silent prayer as her mother relates the situation, guiding her down the hallway with careful footsteps.

Sansa has a fairly decent idea of what to expect tonight. Her mother would slip her bits of information at relevant times throughout her education at Winterfell, and the late Cersei Lannister certainly had held nothing back in their conversation following Sansa's first blood. Still, her stomach clenched with every footfall, and her mother's firm grip upon shaking arm was some small comfort to her.

"Stannis will not hurt you."

_His Grace is just._

"What if I am a disappointment to him?"

Her mother's footsteps halt. Sansa comes to an unsteady stop with the sudden cease in movement. Catelyn's fingers are upon her face, then move into a gentle embrace. They remain until her mother's voice sounds again.

"You are a disappointment to no one."

* * *

 

The crisp air that enters through the open window is a reminder of the impending winter; war is nearly over and a new battle begins. Still, as she waits for Stannis, Sansa finds strength in the coolness of the breeze, takes courage in the wind that carries memories of Winterfell. She breathes deeply. There are deer dashing through the forests of the North, graceful, weaving, darting; her fingers are buried in the soil of her homelands.

A knock, an open door. Heavy footfalls meet her ears and drive away the welcome chill of her homelands, replacing it with fresh ice that shoots through her bones. Even draped in heavy furs, Sansa cannot stop the shiver that, involuntarily, darts through her body.

She knows that Stannis sees.

The bed dips slightly as her husband sits on the edge.

There is silence, heavy silence, for many moments.

_Courtesy is a lady's armour._

"Your Grace, I – "

"We don't have to do this. You've already been through enough."

The words are gruff but yielding to a response.

"But the septons expect it."

Stannis grunts and gets to his feet. Sansa hears him walk across the room, hears the pouring of wine into a glass. She pictures him at the window, gazing across the Blackwater that now stands without fire.

_The Blackwater had burned._

"The septons can go to hell," he finally speaks, and Sansa hears the slamming of a cup down upon a table.

She realizes that he, too, is frightened – of what, she cannot say. Perhaps he fears he will hurt her, fears that she, like her damaged eyesight, is fragile and breakable. Perhaps he fears the obligation that comes with marriage to a blind girl, burned and bruised and broken. Perhaps he fears all this, and more. Sansa remembers that Stannis, too, has loved and lost and burned.

Sansa finds her feet and walks toward her husband, grasping bedside and table and chair, grasping at thin air until a hand meet her own. She draws closer, drawn by heavy breathing at the cold window.

Stannis' lips are cold and firm, but yield, nearly imperceptibly, to her own. Open, open, dance in the moonlight that shatters the mirrors and glass upon the wall, sweep across a bottom lip and break away with breathless pause.

Hands on wrists against a stone wall, Sansa feels the coldness at her back and the continued warmth at her lips. Down, down her neck they follow closely, steps on steps upon an icy plain of the North march the lips of a dutiful Southerner. She will not be conquered.

_She is Queen, she is Queen._

Oh, King, King of the South, you will never rule the North.

She pushes back, wrenching wrists free of strong hands, pulling confused body toward where she knows the bed rests. Pushing down, pushing hard, she falls upon his prone body, returning the favor of dominant kisses upon his lips and down his neck as her fingers unlace his tunic. Blind but seeing, she knows the King is gone.

Run with me, King.

She feels hands at her waist and suddenly fabric against her back. Upper hand is lost. Stannis returns given favors and Sansa finds herself bare to the Southern breeze, bare like her King. Equal, oh equal, she thinks, breathing into his kisses as the moonlight flashes across them.

* * *

 

 

It is done. The King sleeps silently at her side, untouching, unmoving, unfeeling. Sansa feels his chest rise and fall with rhythmic certainty.

_She is Queen._

Sansa muses upon the taste of wine that lingers on her lips.


End file.
